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After Bartók, any composer who writes a Concerto for Orchestra raises expectations of a firecracker. Not so Robin Holloway. His Fourth Concerto for Orchestra was an exhausting 90-minute epic; his Fifth, commissioned by the BBC and premiered on Thursday, is a mere half-hour, but no less densely argued.

Holloway, just retired after almost 40 years teaching music at Cambridge, identifies colours as inspiration for its five movements. Black, worryingly described as a “psychological state”, is evoked in the massive first movement: six percussionists belting everything including a wind machine, and swirls of brass, woodwind and strings overlapping like rolling thunderclouds.